The present invention concerns a method of jointly fitting and/or removing a piston and a cylinder liner in and/or from an engine block of an internal combustion engine. The invention also concerns an arrangement having a cylinder liner and a piston which can be arranged therein and optionally a connecting rod arranged on the piston as well as the piston, the connecting rod and the cylinder liner itself, and also an internal combustion engine and a gripping device.
Particularly in the case of large engines such as, for example, stationary gas engines the problem arises that, for strength reasons, the connecting rod eye which embraces the crankshaft of the internal combustion engine must be so large that the connecting rod can no longer be guided through the cylinder liner when fitting and/or removing the piston. For that situation, it is already known in the state of the art for the piston, connecting rod, and cylinder to be jointly fitted and/or removed. Thus it has already been proposed that gripping devices are to be used, which are fixed both to the piston and also to the cylinder liner. That however suffers from the disadvantage that additional screwthreads, eyes, hooks or the like have to be provided on the piston and the cylinder liner. Alternatively it is also known for spreading bodies to be spread in the cylinder liner and hold the piston under a reduced pressure. That procedure however suffers from the disadvantage that leaks mean that there is always the danger that the piston is not sufficiently securely held in the fitting and/or removal operation. Furthermore, fixing of the cylinder liner, which is based purely on friction, is also suitable rather only for lighter arrangements of cylinder liner and piston.